Ian Dunt: The core thing I think in any organisation is trying to
disentangle a skill at management from a skill in a
particular area of expertise.
Paul Thomas: Welcome to a brand new episode of Starts at the Top
our podcasts about digital leadership and change. I'm Paul
Thomas.
Zoe Amar: And I'm Zoe Amar, we are off to a very exciting start
to the season of the podcast. Last time we spoke to one of our
heroes, Bruce Daisley, and today, we're sharing our
conversation with a political journalist and author, Ian Dunt.
More about Ian in a moment and a bit more about his best
selling book too which he talks about on this episode. But first
of all, I just wanted to give everyone a really quick update
about AI regulation, which I know it's not perhaps the
snappiest thing, but I think it's going to be relevant to a
lot of our listeners. So this is just a really quick fire update
of where AI regulation is at. And the reason why we wanted to
briefly include this is because it's obviously coming up on the
news agenda. There's lots of stories about emerging tech,
what's happening in the US what's happening in the UK. Now,
I wrote a piece for third sector about how AI is going to change
the charity sector over the next few years. And one of the things
that I discovered in the course of that I think something really
relevant to our listeners, is that the government's white
paper on AI regulation, which got published a few weeks ago,
sets out the approach to regulation, which is essentially
going to be delegated to existing regulators. But this is
important because what it means in particular, for the charity
sector, I know we've got lots of charity sector people listening
is that if the approach from the white paper is followed, there
is going to be a lot of regulation, guidance, tools and
resources coming through from the various regulators that
operate in the sector, and of course, across other sectors as
well, that is going to affect charities. So in the context of
the charity sector. And the timeline for this is around 12
months from now, we may be getting AI guidance from the
Charity Commission, potentially, if this approach is followed, I
have asked the commission about this. And they said they are
taking AI seriously, they've not said whether they're going to be
issuing guidance or not. But this is the approach in the
white paper. And there could be guidance coming down the track
from the ICAO, potentially as an organisation that regulates part
of the sector as well, for organisations it's relevant to,
and perhaps even other regulators like the fundraising
regulator, who knows there's a lot still to be decided. But I
wanted to just put that on everyone's radar, because it's
something that we're not really talking about in the sector, at
the moment what the shape of that regulation is going to look
like. And I thought it might be useful for people to know. So
there's two things on this. And I'll just keep it really brief
because I know we need to introduce Ian, very shortly,
who's very much the main event of this episode. But the first
thing is this is principle based regulation. So if you look at
the AI white paper, the current approach is that this is going
to be focused on certain principles, which will be
consistent across the guidance for the regulators. So for
example, there's something in there about fairness and safety.
And the principles themselves, I do think they are quite broad, I
would feel more comfortable if they're related to actual
outcomes, which I appreciate with me to be drafted quite
broadly, because all the sectors are so different. So that's one
thing to bear in mind. The second thing to bear in mind,
which is a bit of a concern, in many ways, from my perspective,
is that what we've got here in the current government approach
to regulation is that there's gonna be a massive dependency on
the digital skills and capacity of individual regulators. And
all regulators are different, right? That's the nature of what
they do. So for example, off comm you know, it's going to be
I would have thought quite well resourced around digital because
of their remit in the online safety bill. Whereas an
organisation like the Commission, which is not huge,
obviously, doing some good work, but not huge, may not
necessarily have a lot of digital expertise and skill in
house potentially. So what that means is that, I think it's
going to be quite challenging to develop a consistent approach to
AI regulation across all of these different regulators and
sectors, because all these regulators are going to be
coming at it from quite a different level of skills and
with very different needs according to the sector they
operate in. So it's a very much changing picture and we'll have
to see what the government decides to do on this.
Paul Thomas: Well, stay tuned to Starts at the Top where you can
find out the very latest from Zoe Amar on AI regulation in the
charity sector and talking of artificial intelligence, we
should really introduce our next topic and our guest, author of
How Westminster works and why it doesn't, Ian Dunt. So we've,
Ian's been in and around our consciousness for a number of
years, particularly due to his endlessly informative and
amusing Twitter feed, you can find him on Twitter in done to
us Twitter is still available. And he's the author of several
books, as I said, the most recent one, which is called how
Westminster works and why it doesn't, which I think is a is
an informative read. Zoe, I think we got a lot out of that
and the conversation.
Zoe Amar: Sunday Times bestseller, great book, highly
recommended to leaders from all sectors, absolutely essential if
you're looking to influence government in any way. And also
if you work in policy and campaigning, and you just want
to understand a bit more about what is going on in Westminster
right now under the surface and some of the challenges that
there are, Ian is incredibly thought provoking on that within
the book. And also within this interview. It's really
entertaining, entertaining interview with him and he shines
a light on our system of government and he sets out what
needs to change. So thank you so much to Ian for making the time
to come on Starts at the Top. Ian Dunt!
We are very excited to welcome Ian Dunt to the podcast today.
Ian Dunt spent several years working in the heart of
Westminster editor of politics.co.uk. He is podcast
host of Oh God, what now? The origin story. And regularly
appears as a political pundit on TV and radio, and is the author
of two previous bits. Brexit, what health happens now? and How
to be a liberal. We're here today to talk about his new book
Sunday Times best seller How Westminster works... and why it
doesn't. Ian welcome to Starts at the Top. We're so happy to
have you here today.
Ian Dunt: Thank you very much. Now that you've listed all the
titles of my books, I suddenly thought it would be quite good
if I one day write a book that isn't in the form of a question.
Just hearing them in that way made me think I know there's a
real pattern developing here that I think I need to stamp on.
Zoe Amar: Well, we'll look forward to he aring the title of
your next book then and no pressure. I know you've only
just published this one.
Paul Thomas: Yeah, we're not waiting for it. But we'll let
you know when we are.
So yeah, we both really enjoyed it. We've had copies for a
couple of weeks. And I actually listened to the audio version.
And I've got a couple of questions to ask you about that
later on.So what motivated you to write it? What was the
reasoning behind it?
Ian Dunt: I just sort of think it's quite helpful, really, if
any of us have any idea how politics operates in this
country. And we really don't, like, on a really deep level, we
don't we have this sort of day to day, you know, this ministers
attacking, you know, that opposition spokesman, this is
how the party is doing, this is a new policy they're going to
implement, but we don't really, as a rule, have any idea of the
systems and the incentives under which we live. So I mean, even
if you were to say to someone who reads a newspaper every day,
can you list all the stages of a bill, I think you probably
struggled to get more than five to 10% of them who could do
that. I mean, I would have struggled with that before I was
writing this piece. And you see, the reason why America, are
actually quite good at this. They have many, many, many
problems in America, but at least they have this thing of
like from from a very young stage in school, you're told
this is how we pass law. This is how democracy operates. Britain
doesn't have that. And that secrecy is not...
It's not an accident. It's actually quite purposeful. It's
not a conspiracy. But it is always very helpful for people
in power that there is a fundamental ignorance about the
mechanisms of power itself, because it makes it much harder
to articulate what's going wrong in a given moment. So it felt
like a sort of useful thing to write, if only so that I could
figure out how the hell Westminster works, let alone
anybody else.
Paul Thomas: And that's good to know. Because I thought when I
went into reading it, I thought, well, this is here's an expert
sharing his expert view on, on how it all works. And I'm gonna
learn a load load of things. But it came apparent as we went
through the book that actually some of this was a revelation to
you, too. So you sort of lift the lid on, on laid on a way of
governing that needs to change. It's quite apparent from reading
even the first chapter of the book and the sort of the
examples that you give throughout the book that it
needs to change. You spoken to more than 100 people and again,
we need to talk about this but apparently listening to the
audiobook version. You had that interview at the end of the of
the book, where you suggest that some of those interviews in
fact, most of those interviews were done within the pub with a
drink in hand to loosen, loosen the thoughts. But yeah, you've
spoken to over 100 people in doing it. So what shocked you
the most?
Ian Dunt: Oh, that's interesting. I think in the end,
it is Afghanistan. I don't think I'd realised just how morally
depraved the evacuation from Afghanistan was. A complete
failure to do even the most rudimentary levels of
organisation and expert assessment, or even just
managerial organisation really. So I mean, there's there's
certain periods when you when he talked to the sort of the
whistleblowers over the evacuation where, you know, we
had said, as a country, anyone who has helped our warwins in
Afghanistan, anyone who's represented women's groups,
female judges, interpreters, any kind of military personnel, you
know, you can apply, and we will try and help you before the
Taliban takeover. Now, a lot of the time, those emails, were
going to a completely empty desk, because the civil service
and the ministers just had not put the people in charge to sit
at those desks, when they had, and when I say when they had,
I'm talking about two or three people, for a lot of the time,
these were people who had no experience of Afghanistan. So
you're getting 1000s and 1000s of emails, you've got a very
limited time span. You know, at this point, the Taliban have
taken Kabul, the airport will close soon, to try and assess
what's the severity of the claim. And to do that in
Afghanistan, you need to know about the various sort of ethnic
and religious groups and how they operate with each other,
which ones are more at threat from Taliban rule. And yet the
people that were there didn't even know how to refer to
Afghans. At that point, they had absolutely no specialist
knowledge whatsoever. When at the very last moment, this team
was firing off these emergency last gasp attempts to just at
least save this family, or at least save that family. Those
responses were met by Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary
saying I can't look at this because you haven't formatted
the table correctly. At which point further hours were wasted.
These are the final minutes of the evacuation further hours
were wasted, trying to reformat a table so that he would look at
it during which time those families were not saved. And
when you look at that is a sort of moral... sorry I want to keep
this slightly upbeat as a conversation. But you did ask,
you know, so as a, just as a sense of national moral
collapse, it's really upsetting. And it keeps with it that that
important point, which is that competence is not just an
organisational principle or something about good governance.
Competence is a moral issue. When you're running a country,
you know, when you fail, you fail on a moral basis. And
that's what we saw in Afghanistan. So yeah,
emotionally, that was that was the section I was most affected
Zoe Amar: And I found your chapter on Afghanistan so
by.
incredibly, moving and particularly the stories of the
families and the individual space as well, we just don't
know what happened to these people. And it felt like a
moment when all of these failures of the system, just
kind of crystallise.
Ian Dunt: Yeah, that's exactly right. Because I mean, you're
seeing a failure, certainly at a ministerial level. I mean, you
know, at the time, we kept on complaining that Dominic Raab
was on holiday. I mean, actually, the problem really was
that he came back from holiday, because it's when Dominic Raab
comes back and actually gets involved that the whole thing
falls apart and an even worse state than it was before. We see
the failure in the civil service, which, which has, for
decades just had almost no interest in expertise at all,
you know, the promotional structure in the civil service
is to basically say, look, the more you move, department and
position, the quicker you'll get paid more and get various higher
levels of seniority. Now, the trouble is that that just
penalises anyone who's been sat doing one thing for 12 years,
whether it's rail franchise, contract negotiation, or
Afghanistan is essentially considered someone who has
failed, but someone who spends six months on Universal Credit,
six months on a minister's private office six months
negotiating with Europeans. That's a high flyer, I think the
thing is, that person knows nothing about anything, you
know, you cannot know anything about an area with just six
months and then move on. But these are the people that reward
and we punish those who have developed specialist skills. And
then I think the other layer to them mentioned is journalism,
like journalism is failure journalism is part of the
political system. It is that suppose the scrutinised power
hold ministers to account, but you look at the way journalists
acted during that period. And most of the time was spent
fixating on Pen Farthing a man who was talking about getting
cats and dogs out of Afghanistan, when cats and dogs
were under no threat from the Taliban. I mean, I say this as
someone who likes cats and dogs, I have a dog. I do not want dogs
prioritising an evacuation from Afghanistan. And in that final
flight that we see. And that is should create just a sense of
moral despair that lasts with us forever until we change the
system. But that final flight we see is him on a plane with cats
and dogs while we leave behind the people who had actually
helped British ends in Afghanistan.
Zoe Amar: Really, really shocking, incredibly shocking.
And it really takes us to one of the themes of the book as well,
which is about, which is also theme of this Podcast, how
leaders make decisions. We were particularly struck by your
chapter in the book, and the almost impossible sounding
working lives of ministers, and in particular the box system.
Can you tell us a bit more about how ministers make decisions and
also the box system as well, for anyone who isn't aware of it?
Ian Dunt: Yeah. So, I mean, we all see the box, right? It's
those the red boxes, the red sort of suitcase that they carry
with them when they leave. And in that box is contained,
probably the most irrational system for decision making in
all of Britain, I mean, no other organisation of any size would
ever operate in this way. So understanding you need start
with facts of what a minister's day entails. And it is just
remorselessly full of work. Partly because civil servants
pass up out of a risk averse culture, almost any decision
they can, I mean, they know that they can get in trouble on a
political decision. So that the tendency is no matter how
innocuous it is just pass the decision up to the Minister. So
they're signing off, signing off signing up, it's possible for
ministers to have I'm not making this up sort of up to 20
meetings a day, just meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting,
meeting, none of it really accomplishing very much. They're
doing a daily political firestorm of whatever their
opposite number is said whatever is going on in the media,
whatever the Prime Minister might be thinking about a
reshuffle, what their junior ministers are trying to take
that job, all of that sort of stuff. They're being pushed into
positions by the Civil Service, which essentially tries to box
them in by presenting a variety of quite mad policy options. And
then one that makes sense, because it's what the Civil
Service wants the Minister to do. They're having to prepare
for their performances in parliament that ministerial
question time, where there'll be sustained questioning, so
there's lots going on in their day. And then they finish the
day. And the civil servants give them the red box. And the red
box contains all the decisions that they need to make. Now most
of these decisions, many of them at least, would be far better
made in a meeting will be far better made with a visual
presentation to talk through you talking about alternate funding
models for public service reform that is not particularly
conducive to something that is just put on a piece of paper and
put inside of a box. But anyway, they have to go in there anyway.
They're going to take that box, they'll be leaving at work,
let's say 7pm a PM, they're going to go home, they're going
to have dinner, they're going to have some wine, there'll be
absolutely knackered and very, very stressed. And then at about
10pm, they're gonna start making the most important decisions
that the country operates on now that just on a basic level of
understanding how humans operate, and the basis upon
which they they might make sensible decisions is a very,
very foolish system, indeed. But it is the one that we use in
Zoe Amar: That's such a bizarre system, isn't it? Because
this country.
obviously, on this podcast, we talk to leaders from all
different sectors, and certainly in the business world and the
charity world where I work, leaders now give a lot of
thought, as far as they can have a manage their day, and if I'm
really productive in the morning, I will make all my key
decisions and and I'll try not to make too many decisions over
the course of the day because I'll just get overloaded. And I
was really struck in the book by that chapter, with David Lammy,
talking about well, ministers sometimes have to make 50
decisions a day just seems so bizarre that the whole system
has has evolved this way. And has anyone tried to change the
box system?
Ian Dunt: No, not really, you know, the civil service. I mean,
the Civil Service has, in certain ways, has been sort of
made fairly impotent, particularly in its willingness
to challenge a minister. And I think you saw that over I don't
know, I have to keep on mentioning his name. And I'm
rather horrified by it. But the Dominic Raab bullying
allegations and all of that you saw how, how difficult it can be
for them to challenge a minister. But in terms of the
institution, in terms of the mechanisms that it operates on,
it's very hard to challenge and you get generation after
generation and ministers come in, and they're like, right,
that's it, I'm going to change the system, we're going to do
this, as one civil servants says in the book says they all fail,
like the machine is just too big and the machine will will
railroad you. That is the way that they're used to making the
decisions. I have to say, I mean, it's funny, you know,
because I spoke to lots of friends and sort of quite senior
positions in the private sector when I was writing the book,
trying to see which bits overlapped. And, and the box
system, I mean, almost to a person that just like, well,
that's just insane. And why would anyone make decisions that
way? The bit that they did recognise was the risk aversion
and decisions being passed up to a kind of choke point at
management, which I was sort of told by, it probably doesn't
count for every private sector organisation, but certainly for
many of the larger corporations, that people that I spoke to they
were that No, I totally recognise that. And that is just
an institutional problem that you often have. The box work
system is a unique form of pathological ineptitude that
we've reserved entirely for the political system.
Zoe Amar: And it must be so deeply frustrating to work in
that kind of system. And that's, again, something that really
stuck out for me from some of the interviews that you did for
the book as well. And that got me thinking about culture and
wellbeing and also what doing this kind of work must do to any
talented, highly energetic leaders, energy levels. So
there's that really interesting interview in the book with Nick
Clegg saying that quite often, particularly as a minister,
you're maybe getting three to five hours of sleep per night.
What do you think is the human cost of working in this kind of
system? Because there are, right talented people who go into,
right, you've interviewed a lot of them for your book? What does
it do to people? And what do you do if you get burned out?
Ian Dunt: I mean, we should, we should mention in this point
that the vast majority of ministers are not bright, and
they're not talented. And that is absolutely a problem that we
have. It's genuinely we're taking a talent pool, on the
beat, you know that they became MPs on the basis of their
partisan commitment, essentially, their campaigning
skills. And then from that talent pool, we then select the
ones who happen to be most loyal to whoever's in charge at the
time. And that's not the best way to get the best people. And
we therefore don't have the best people. When we do however, get
some, like we get some talented sort of intelligent people who
even if they're not experts, can become experts fairly quickly,
overnight to 18 months in a cabinet position. And as those
Nick Clegg, say, they are basically broken by by the
system by the demands that it places on you. I mean, he's the
he's very interesting on this, and people don't talk about it
very much. It was in the conversation with him when I was
like, what's really the thing I should be thinking of here, it's
been there was like, you just need to recognise that the
political class are chronically and universally knackered, like
they're absolutely physically and emotionally and
intellectually broken. And that, by the way, goes for MPs as
well. You know, MPs have two jobs, right, the constituency
job constituency work, and then supposedly scrutinising
legislation in the commons. Now, if you were to do either one of
those jobs properly, you would not have time for the second
job. So even on that basis, they're absolutely knackered,
they're also and we don't talk about this enough, away from
their family for four days out of the week, unless they happen
to live in a London constituency. And you know, the
toll that that takes a lot of them is, you know, imagine you
got young kids, right. I mean, that's this is not something you
want to do just be away from home for days of the week. And
in fact, we also don't talk about this, and MPs don't like
talking about it. But the pressure it puts on their
romantic relationships, on their part on on their relationship
with their partner is very, very severe as well. And it's quite
hard to maintain those relationships. Then with the
minister, you have all of that, plus the box work and the
ferocity of online culture, and, you know, hostile TV interviews,
and all the various machinations at the top of government. So
they're very, very tired. And when I spoke to sort of, sort of
professional psychologists, I mean, they were quite concerned
in it for them. It's about the individual. For me, it's about
what are the political implications, because then
they're like someone dealing with that kind of load of stress
is less able to handle complex cognitive loads, they're less
able to do basic decision making to evaluate options. But you
know, because they're knackered it's like asking, you know, when
we get off like a long haul transatlantic flight at seven
o'clock in the morning at Gatwick and go now make very
important decisions about your luggage. I would say, Well, no,
you know what, I'd rather wait until tomorrow morning before I
do that. And that's essentially the position that these guys are
Zoe Amar: Some of these decisions will be life or death.
in all the time.
As you say, some of them will be a bit more mundane, but some of
them will be absolutely critical. If you're a health
minister, you might be making decisions that affect patient
safety. And it's really interesting, because what you're
saying there about how burnout and massive overload can lead to
decline in terms of energy and the quality of work that anyone
would be doing. It reminds me a bit of a previous list that we
had a few months ago, a guy called Mike Rucker, who's a
Silicon Valley psychologist, he was saying that he'd done
studies on doctors where if they're incredibly overloaded,
and they just don't have any space in their day, they don't
have time for breaks, then their empathy starts to decline
because they're exhausted. And that means there are worse
outcomes for patients. And I wonder whether there are perhaps
some parallels with this as well. I mean, no one, even the
most competent, the most highly energetic person can perform at
their best I would have thought in this kind of environments.
Ian Dunt: Yeah, I think that's right. I also think that the
last few years of more humane and civilised assessments as to
what makes like a respectful and dignified working environment
and thinking about people's mental health have been almost
completely ignored in Westminster. So you just you
just, I mean, take the basic fact of a politician's life and
there's nothing we can ever do about this. It's the way that it
has to be, which is that at a certain point, you're going to
not know whether you have a job in a year's time. So right now
for MPs they know an election is coming probably within you know,
in about a year, year and a half, and they have no idea
whether they're gonna have a job after that. Many of them will
be, you know, in their 40s 50s, you know, certainly before
retirement age, and some of them will find jobs and think tanks
or charities or whatever, but many of them won't. And that'll
be the end of a dream they've had since childhood and also of
their political career. Now, they are going to experience
that in stress, anyone would, right? If you just get turned
around and say, Well, you may or may not have a job in a year's
time, you are going to stress out about that. But there are no
structures put in place by the parties to help them out. In
fact, there's a kind of cultural, it's kind of
interesting psychologically, that they're sort of treated
almost like a dead body, once they fall out of Parliament, no
one wants contact with them, it's as if they're sort of
cursed. So you know, your phone stops ringing, you didn't get
emails anymore, the parties don't really have anything to
link up on the final, you go into Parliament one last time to
basically, you know, it's like a police officer in a thriller,
you know, putting down their gun in their badge, you know,
handing in their parliamentary version or this, and then no one
cares about you, you know, there's just been an election,
you're out, there's a whole new load of MPs about to come in,
you're basically just discarded, and there's very, very little
attention by the political parties, or indeed, by
Parliament, about what happens to people when they've been
chucked out. It is a real, it's really telling how afraid the
flicker you can see in the eyes. And that emotional sense you get
from MPs, when they think of the prospect of no longer being an
MP, they are truly horrified by it, and they get almost no
support at all.
Zoe Amar: Gosh, that is so brutal, I didn't realise the
extent to which it is that brutal. So there's no like you
would get in a big company, for example, there's no CIT
programme, no out boarding programme, it's just panting
your past, see you later.
Ian Dunt: Right. And I don't want to over, you know, be too
nice to the private sector, because there's plenty of
private sector, places that will treat you in exactly the same
way. And it will be just as brutal, maybe more. But
certainly none of none of that sort of new culture of just
caring compassion for people is really permeated in Westminster.
And I'd say that goes further. I mean, that goes for their
working life as well, in that, you know, we know from the
studies that we've seen that a really big minority of them will
admit to having mental health problems, but it's very hard for
them to get help. Because once you go to get help, you're
essentially giving ammunition to people around you in Parliament,
it's a potential threat to your own political prospects. So it's
very hard to get them to seek help for the things that they go
through. I'm saying all of this, and it makes me sound quite
compassionate and considerate of MPs. And I don't dislike MPs.
But to be honest, my main concern isn't really them, it's
what's the quality of the legislation? What's the quality
of the policymaking? What's the impact on the material well
being of people in this country by virtue of the decisions they
make, and that is severely impaired by just having a
deeply, deeply uncompassionate and unthoughtful system for how
we look after?
Zoe Amar: There's a trickle down effect? Isn't that because there
is this fundamental issue and all these things that need to
change and to modernise? And that has an impact on the
citizen doesn't?
Ian Dunt: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, you know, we have to live
in the world that they create. And if you, you know, don't
create the right environment for people to make decisions, and
most importantly, to scrutinise the decisions that are made by
government, then you're going to live in a world that's really
quite dreadful. And that's what we see. Right? I mean, you know,
whether it's any waiting times, or whether it's the fullness of
the courts, or whether it's the way the police behave, or
whether it's the fact that we've had no policy and housing, you
know, we live in that world of completely jumbled priorities,
have really deeply flawed incentives, and have a set of
ideas that are reached for the wrong reason at the wrong time,
and are insufficiently scrutinised in order to be
effective. So yeah, we all suffer by virtue of the culture
that is created in that building.
Zoe Amar: What's it like to be a journalist in that incredibly,
volatile environment with all of these challenges that you've
outlined? Well, I hated it. But lots of other people take to it
very, very well. So some, some people absolutely love the
lobby, the lobby is, you know, this bizarre institution within
Westminster, where accredited journalists sit and work and we
can go pretty much wherever we want. And I remember when I
first got to the lobby, my friends and I just you know,
they give you this pass. And you know, you're different people's
passes have different colours, if you're a Lord, if you're, you
know, civil servants, if you're a journalist, and they open
different doors, and we were at a drinks reception we've been
we've been drinking quite a lot, actually. And we were just like,
I wonder how long I can walk in a straight line with this pass
how many doors that opens, we were kind of astonished after 20
minutes. We're like, and it opens this door. Now, we don't
even know where we are right now. It's like which door come
next. So you really do get a lot of freedom there. It has a very
particular culture, which is very public school. And which is
which is predominantly very male. It was very, it was much
more drinky when I first got there. But as time have changed,
it's become much more Evian water at lunch rather than two
pints of ale. Unfortunately, it's very good at... I don't say
this is necessarily a criticism, it's very good at covering sort
of caught intrigue and caught intrigue is a part of the
politics and will always be a part of politics. It just has to
be it's about individuals as well as parties and systems. But
that is not all there is to politics. And it's extremely
poor at evaluating policies as they're thought up, and most
importantly, and evaluating policies once they've been
passed. So you know, if we were to think of like Gove's
education reforms, right. I mean, that happened years ago,
like over a decade ago, and there's huge amount of
controversy at the time, you know, what's going on with the
syllabus? What's going on with free schools? I mean, when have
you read anything from political journalists saying how that's
gone. But we don't actually know how that's gone. We just don't
look into it. Because once it's done, once it's passed, once
it's law, it essentially ceases to exist for the lobby, they
just stop looking at it. So it's a very frenzied culture to be
in. It's quite fun, and quite dramatic. But I have to say, you
don't have to be there very long before you have a moment in a
darkened room thinking, Are these all empty calories,
because they're starting to feel a lot like empty calories? And I
think ultimately, they are.
Paul Thomas: I think you also mentioned in the book and talked
quite extensively about the changes in the press, and the
pressures on newspapers, dwindling subscription rates,
the cost of actually printing and newspaper today just is
outlandish, the cover price doesn't even get close to it. So
the pressure on journalists to come out with with copy that
that people are going to be interested in reading. It's all
about clickbait, and headlines. So the quality must have hugely
diminished as well, what people are looking for what journalists
are looking for, and looking to report.
Ian Dunt: Yeah, exactly. I mean, we had you know, we, we
experienced the very severe industrial problem of the fact
that people stopped buying our product. And it's quite hard to
make things work when everyone says, I'm not going to buy it
anymore, and I'm going to get it for free. That has slightly
changed with a bit that really hasn't changed that much as the
advertising. Now, you know, we could sell advertising
classified and display for really good money. And that was
where the I mean, it was kind of a garden of Eden, huge profits
were made, you know, in the sector, when it was on paper.
But as soon as it was online, people didn't want to read those
adverts, and worst of all, advertisers got a lot of
information about whether people did read the adverts, which just
happens, they didn't and they never gave up. And probably all
that money had been wasted. And that really meant that you know,
you start laying off staff, the staff that are left, you know,
it's no more the days of you can just write one story a day. You
know, that means going to a press conference, talking to
your contacts, mulling it over, actually trying to get some
degree of unsend what's going on, you know, journalists,
journalists, I work with writing 2, 3, 4, even five stories a
day, just churning this stuff out. And what are you going to
do, right? You don't have the time to sit there and go, Okay,
what's happened with the free schools policy? What are the ins
and outs of this election informed my reader? What's much
easier to do is say, oh, Nadine Dorries just wrote something
unbelievably stupid on Twitter. And so now but also, Gary
Lineker says that she's an idiot, and she's actually should
have done this. And this person says, Actually, Gary, Lineker
shouldn't. And you know, that story. I mean, it's basically
completely meaningless. It costs zero pounds to write like, any
journalist can turn that story out in 20 to 30 minutes, and
people read it. They read it, they read it in a way that they
frankly, do not read stories about policy. So all of our
incentives, whether it's financial, whether it's at a
tutorial, whether it's consumer point towards this kind of
really quite superficial form of journalism, that doesn't do
anything to sort of contribute to our intellectual debate about
politics at all.
Zoe Amar: So given all the challenges you've outlined, we
know that we have lots of leaders listening to this
podcast, so we're looking to influence policy changes, and
especially charity leaders. How do you go about influencing a
system which has so many of these issues and challenges?
Ian Dunt: So I guess if I was advising someone like that, the
first thing I would say is, first of all, I will put quite a
lot of priority on the committee's. So select
committees are one of the few bits of Westminster that do work
fairly well. I don't want to overdo it , you see plenty of
committee meetings where you just think, oh my God, no one
has any idea what they're talking about here. But
generally speaking, it's based on listening to experts, it's
based on evidence. And those are MPs who are working on a cross
party way to try and find a consensus with some kind of
empirical foundation to it. So as much as you can get a role
speaking to those committees, and including the staff, people
they don't often think about the commons clerks who will work as
staff on those committees. That is a good way to go. The same is
true also, by the way for the APPGs, the All-Party groups.
Now, this is a complex area because the All-Party groups,
especially the country based or party groups, kind of assess pit
of corruption. And there's some really mucky stuff going on with
funding models. And what's happening there. There's lots of
MPs who come in and suddenly find that they have a lifelong
abiding fascination with Peru, where they just happened to be
funded to go on nice jollies with a wife and kids. So there
isn't a problem there. But there is also some good work that goes
on at the APPG's and it's worth being involved with them. And
then really, I suppose you have to try and throw your lot in
with the civil service, and hope that some of that can trickle
down to the minister, and doesn't meet this kind of thick
membrane of objection that you get from their special advisers
from their political appointments. So it's hard, it's
difficult, but those those would be the angles that I would take
in trying to influence in the first case.
Zoe Amar: So it's hard, but it's still not impossible. And even
given all the challenges
Ian Dunt: It's not. I mean, you're I mean, you know, the
realistic part of it is you always go for what you think you
can do. You know, I mean, let's say you're, you know, let's say
you're an animal rights, charity, or a veterinary
charity, or something, you're gonna, you probably wouldn't
care maybe many of the people who work for the charity would
be very indifferent or hostile towards Brexit, as I would, it
was terrible idea, and we shouldn't have done it. But
nevertheless, if you're in that position, you think, Well, hang
on, there is an opening, there's a government talking about how
do we do things differently to Europe, and one of the ways they
might wish to demonstrate that is by showing, you know, what,
have you changed with your animal regulation? So you're
always it's not, you know, this perfect utopian world of they're
gonna listen to stuff on the basis of its objective truth or
social usefulness? It's, can you corral what you're trying to do
into a narrative that the government wants anyway? So
it's, I mean, it's worth talking about why then about how that
how they agree with what the legislation is that they're
passing, right. So just before about a year before a King
speech, when the government puts all of its legislation together,
let's say about 20, bills, you know, departments start passing
up their ideas for what rules they'd like to be in the
legislative agenda to the to the PBL Committee, which is in a
cabinet office. Now all of those bills go in, and then they look
at them, and they decide, right, what are we going to go with?
What will we get rid of? which bits of you know, the
environment, sort of departments? Can we put into
actually sort of like a home office bill, maybe if that's the
way to do it? What are they looking for that moment, they're
looking for narratives, they're trying to say, look, this is the
speech the Prime Minister made the other day, this is his five
core agendas. For Boris Johnson, it would be Brexit and levelling
up, right? You know, for Rishi Sunak, he's got his five points
that he wants to make about how he's going to do a bunch of
things that he's not going to do like stopping the votes and bla
bla bla. So you know, what the narrative is, your job then is
to see what are the bits that we want to do that we can make a
case for how that could form part of their narrative. And
that would be the key, that will be the key message that you
would have in talking to people in the political system in the
year ahead of a king speech.
Paul Thomas: It starts to get to the point where yeah, being from
a corporate background, it's like, it's like that period of
time, just before a business starts to set budgets, it's
everyone feverishly running around trying to get their
project to the top of the list and doing that internal
campaigning to make sure that that's theirs is on top of the
pile, when it actually gets in front of the board and the CEO,
it's very, very similar. And I was quite struck actually, just
sort of reading the book, the amount of times I made a post it
note and stuck it in that it was exactly the same as accountancy
and law firms where, you know, it's generally partners with no
expertise or qualifications in a particular area, who taken
assume lead roles in places like HR, for example. And IT and
overseeing all these big projects, and they've got no
qualification and it sidelines the people actually do. So it's
very, very similar.
Ian Dunt: There's a, it's funny, because I had a thing in my head
all the time of can't... look, I, you know, I'm the man of the
left, I'm not writing books in order to show how great the
private sector is. And lots of the problems that I outline, you
see, I think, in the private sector, and one of them is, as
you're saying, you know, people moving into positions they know
nothing about. And the core thing I think, in any
organisation is trying to disentangle a skill at
management from a skill in a particular area of expertise.
And I think we get ourselves into a terrible muddle when the
only way of promotion, the only way of paying more money, the
only way of showing a higher social value to someone is to
just get them to manage more and more people. Because what you
eventually do, I mean, especially in civil services,
you get basically a bunch of really quite intelligent
eggheads and just go... dump them into management where
they're like, Well, I'm not actually very good at this. This
is not but I have to do it. Because you know, I have two
kids and I live in London and I really need to be able to pay
this mortgage. So all of that, the basis upon which we promote
and pay people seems to me to be a perennial problem that doesn't
just exist in politics. It's also there in many parts of the
private sector as well.
Paul Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. And then we've we've built
podcasts around this idea that, you know, it's called Starts at
the Top. And I think the initial hypothesis we had was, well...
leadership Starts at the Top right, yeah, other people can
take in assume leadership roles within an organisation, but
unless they're being shown the way from the top, then it's
really, really hard to get decision made and things off the
ground. But over the course of the podcast, and certainly post
pandemic, we've really started to question whether that is
actually true. And actually, now we're looking at leaders and
thinking, Well, what changes are you making to bring in thinking
from elsewhere and outside of the organisation within the
organisation? So just thinking about real, real change in
Westminster? Your book is how Westminster works and why it
doesn't. And then at the end, you've put forward these ideas.
So does it need to start at the top? What needs to change in the
current system to allow fundamental change in in
Westminster? Because it seems to me that you're painting this
picture where there is, it's really only at that top level
where that change can be made. But I've just really interested
in your thoughts around it.
Ian Dunt: It's funny, because politics in the private sector
is sort of similar and different in that respect, right? I mean,
you'd often get this, when you see politicians go into
politics, usually, usually through the Lord's to become a
minister or something, they'll be incredibly frustrated,
because they're sort of used to being able to say something, and
then there's something sort of typically happens, right in
politics is like, well, that's not how it works in politics at
all. And so you can come in a quite a senior level and saying
something is just the beginning of a very, very long and slow
process, in which lots of different institutions are
butting up against each other, not the least of which is the
executive, the legislature, and the civil service. So it's quite
distinct in that sense. But in another way, it's quite similar,
which is that the Prime Minister does have an overwhelming amount
of executive power in our system, you know, that's not the
case elsewhere, right. If you're in the US, you know, they do not
have the ability to pass legislation, Congress has the
only ability to pass legislation, if you're in
Germany, local states have power, they can really, we do
not really have any meaningful form of local government, not
really not in terms of suddenly not in terms of policymaking, so
they can do almost anything. I mean, you look, if we were to
decide right now, to remove the Prime Ministers power to appoint
their cronies to the House of Lords, it could be done with a
letter written by Rishi Sunak, to the Lords Appointments
Commission, no more than that, it wouldn't even need
legislation, you can just write a letter and it would be done,
it would happen. So a lot of it is very, very easy to do in
terms of the practical mechanisms of how it will take
place. The challenge is, is a very ancient moral challenge.
And it's basically how do you get the person who most benefits
from a system to change the system, given that they're the
person who benefits from it. And that is much harder. And the
only real route to it is the rather old fashioned route of
elections. It's about getting opposition's to pin themselves
to the master make clear what they want to change before the
election takes place. So in those crucial two years after an
election, they actually implement the changes to all of
the most important constitutional reforms we see
come after an election, that modern select committees in
1979, the reform of the House of Lords in 1997 is what has the
independence of the Bank of England, the creation of the
Office of Budget Responsibility and the implement the semi
implementation of the right committee reforms in 2010. It's
always after an election, that's the crunch point. And the key,
and it really is key now, because we're in that period, is
to get the opposition on paper supporting that stuff. So they
have to enact it when they then become a government.
Paul Thomas: So we're gonna hold our breath for about 18 months.
And then...
Ian Dunt: Well, I mean... This is a relaxed podcast, if I was
talking to, you know, political activists or party members, I
will be saying, don't hold your breath, just go out and make it
happen and hold them to the wall until we get something.
Paul Thomas: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And yeah, so in the,
in the final lines of your book, it says, there's a really lovely
quote that both Zoe and I have talked about, and I think we
need to end this podcast on a more hopeful note. And you say,
Change will not come from the generosity of those who benefit
from the existing state of affairs, it will come from the
sustained challenge of those who do not what makes you hopeful
about the future of Westminster and politics.
Ian Dunt: When I feel hopeful now, when I see what people's
demands are, you know, I mean, during the Brexit years and
before, that our politics was lost in this kind of cultural
anxiety and sense of victimhood, arguably on both sides, but now,
people want something practical. They want a country that works.
You know, they want schools that work, they want transport that
works. Most importantly they want have a health service that
they feel will actually protect them and not just leave them on
the floor of their kitchen for eight hours after they've had a
heart attack. Now the way to get that is to think, what is the
right way of passing policy? What is the right way of
ensuring that when we try to implement a change, for
instance, is something complex, like the health service, we're
in control of the minute goes that you have in a step by step
process, the funding the organisation, the assessment of
what we need in terms of labour force, that kind of complex,
technical, granular policymaking and policy enforcement and
strategy delivery process that is actually at the heart of
delivering on what people want in the country right now. And
where that's the debate, where it's practical and achievable,
then we start thinking about the mechanisms by which we do it. So
it although it does feel like things are falling apart in this
country, unlike a few years ago, the debate is now in quite a
conducive place to thinking let's have a better system of
governance than the one we have now. Because by Christ, the one
that we have now is not working very well,
Zoe Amar: Thank you so much Ian. And what a resounding note to
end on and thank you for shining a light on what's going on in
this system, and also defining what needs to change. It's a
wonderful book, we thoroughly encourage people to go out there
and get it and we learned so much from reading it. And we're
sure our listeners will too so thank you so much for coming on
today.
Ian Dunt: No, thank you guys. It was a real pleasure talking to
you. Cheers. Thank you very much.
Paul Thomas: Thank you so much to weigh in for coming onto the
podcast being so frank with his views and being generally
entertaining. I think you're right. It's such an entertaining
conversation. It's a really interesting read, particularly
for people who are maybe like me are a bit nonplussed by politics
a bit disengaged from it, it was a real shot in the arm and a
real reminder of how important it is and just how broken the
system actually is. So I'm now hanging off his every word, if
you are like me, and sometimes find it easier to engage with
the audio version of the book. So if you notice, I think it's
in chapter 11, where there is a very audible sigh where even Ian
can't believe quite what he is. The stories that he is
recounting, it was quite funny because you don't get that in
the book, right? You can read the words and you don't you
don't hear the saying in the background. But there was a very
audible sigh in chapter 11, which is really entertaining.
Zoe Amar: Brilliant. And thank you so much again to Ian for a
fantastic interview. So next up is an episode on volunteering
appropriately enough in volunteers week. So we look
forward to sharing that with you in a couple of weeks time. In
the meantime, you can find us over on Twitter, we're at at
Starts at the Top one. And you could also email us at starts at
the top@gmail.com.
Paul Thomas: And if you listen to us on Apple podcasts, and I
know we say this every week, we really do appreciate it when you
do please rate and review us it does really really help with
visibility of the podcast and getting into more people's ears.
So please do rate and review. And we'll speak to you again in
a couple of weeks during volunteers week. Thank you very
much.
Zoe Amar: Speak to you soon. Bye